U.S. Pat. No. 7,113,803 assigned to MICROSOFT Corporation, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method and system for enabling instant messaging on mobile devices, according to which a customized SMS message is sent to awaken the mobile device so that instant messaging may be initiated. In one of the described embodiments, the recipient responds to the customized SMS message by creating an Internet connection and establishing a chat session over the Internet connection.
The customized SMS is generated and sent by the server, which translates a regular SMS it receives. The patent does not appear to describe any status check made by the server.